Purpose takes time to cultivate. It requires that we sit with ourselves, do the work of stripping away the armor we accumulated to survive in the “not enough” culture and see who we really are and what we are meant to bring to the world.

It doesn’t matter what Batman would do of course, that’s nonsense! What matters is letting go of the thought “there’s only one way, and it’s not going to work.” After we let that go, the world of possibility opens up again.

If we embrace the mindset of more is possible than is seen on the surface, failure seems less finite, and less damaging. Not only that, there is real value in the experience of failing at something, doing some self reflection, and trying something else. This is a tool that kids can use, but they have to practice it, and they don’t get to practice if they don’t experience the failure in the first place.

Adults talk a big game to kids about how important honesty is. Most often what’s conveyed in these conversations is that it’s bad to lie. This is a great starting place when teaching honesty to kids, but there is another aspect to honesty that is much less talked about and not often practiced. Emotional honesty is the practice of telling people how you feel, and it’s especially important in moments where there is social pressure to hide it.

Have you ever said something about yourself that was so mean that you stopped and wondered, “Who said that?” You’re lucky if you have. A lot of the time we don’t even hear the voice, we just assume that it’s us, and take it’s word as truth. I call this voice of negative self talk, the inner critic. And I believe pretty much everyone has one. For many kids, and adults, the inner critic can be a heavy weight that we carry around constantly, like a rock in a backpack, and it’s exhausting just trying to get it to stop talking. Luckily there are some great tools that help us put that rock down, and more importantly, see if for what it really is.

I put worthiness at the beginning of everything that I do. I tell my clients about it the first time we talk and it’s the first lesson in all my workshops. Understanding worthiness is the groundwork for everything that comes later, because when things get hard, and we trip and find ourselves scraped up, lying on the ground, worthiness will be right there.